About the Roskamp Institute

What do research and development have in common? The answer:
Robert Roskamp, a philanthropist and Sarasota-based developer
of senior living facilities. Roskamp has been in the development
business for more than 30 years, beginning in Chicago where he
built specialized homes for emotionally disabled adults. It was
then that he first became interested in diseases of the mind.

Understanding first hand the effects these diseases can have
on patients and their families after his brother was diagnosed
with schizophrenia, Roskamp dedicated his life to finding cures
and treatments of such diseases, and has been joined in this endeavor
by his wife, Diane.

In 2003, their quest led to the creation of the Roskamp Institute
in Sarasota, Florida, where some of the world's most cutting-edge
research is conducted on neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's
disease. Since opening its doors, the Roskamp Institute has been
a leader in the global effort to better understand and ultimately
cure debilitating diseases of the mind.

The foundation for the Institute's work was set more than
a decade ago by Roskamp's two lead researchers, Drs. Michael
Mullan and Fiona Crawford. They were key members of a pioneering
team of scientists who, in the early 1990s, discovered that the
onset of Alzheimer's was directly related to the accumulation
of a protein called ß-amyloid. This protein is present in
everyone, but thanks to the groundbreaking work of this team,
it is now known that too much of it will result in the development
of Alzheimer's.

The Roskamp Institute is dedicated to developing medications
and therapeutic treatments that will reduce or slow the toxic
accumulation of ß-amyloid. A promising new
treatment, one that was developed by our researchers in Sarasota,
is NILVAD - a
clinical study to test the efficacy and safety of nilvadipine
as a treatment in Alzheimer's disease currantly underway in
Europe.